04/10/2015

Oliver may not end up being the artist we thought he might be. Instead, he may be rich, or at least marry a sugar mama. He is fascinated by money and what money can get (i.e., Pokeman cards) and quite impressive in what we call his "acquisitional" strategies. For example, there is a quirky and highly geeky comics/card store unfortunately located about five minutes away from our house, manned by a lovely guy, maybe 35 or so, who sweetly puts up with kids' nutty questions about what to get and what might or might not be in a package of Pokeman. Oliver is now insisting that this guy be invited to his birthday party.

"He's so nice!" he says innocently.

"But you don't even know his name, Oliver."

"I know but isn't it good that I still want to invite him?"

"What do you think he might give you as a present if he came to your party, O?"

"Um ..."

"Yeah."

Then yesterday, I watched JK Rowling's commencement speech at Harvard. (Have you seen it? You have to, so you can cry and swoon for 20 minutes or so. I will embed it at the end of this post.) Anyway, Rowling is releasing a book soon based on her speech, which in part impresses the importance of allowing ourselves to fail sometimes—and she's devoting the proceeds to good causes including Lumos, the foundation she created to help orphans around the world (named after the light-giving spell in the Harry Potter books). So I tried to explain the goodness of Rowling's act—the fact that she is not only making money but giving it away. The generosity, the ability of money to change the world—not just to acquire more and more. It was quite eloquent and I was sure the message had some impact on the kids.

Oliver: "So how much dollars does she have?"

Me: "Well, a lot, but that's not exactly what I was saying."

Oliver: "How much?"

Of course Oliver is much more than a future tycoon (or grand theft orchestrator). He is innocent and dreamy, too. A month or so ago, we stopped for a yummy dinner at Kaffé 1870 in Wakefield on our way back from a cottage weekend, where the chef (Jeff Hardhill) is also the singer of the alt-country band fiftymen. Oliver was so excited about this: a rock star in his midst, just out of his sight in the kitchen. So of course he pestered our server (super, super nice guy) to meet Jeff in the flesh. Now Jeff is quite shy, but he was great and obliged, and O just about fell over with happiness. But there was more: before we left, Jeff asked O to come into the kitchen, whereupon he gave him an autographed CD of the latest fiftymen album. The autograph was helpfully located in a strategic position; you can see why.

(PS—What a beautiful photograph—our server took it.)

We played that album all the way back to Ottawa. No one was allowed to talk so O could fully absorb how awesome it was, and how much he loved Jeff. He was quiet and reverent.

A couple of days after it was the Grammys and Lady Gaga had just done her medley of The Sound of Music songs. Georgia is BESOTTED with The Sound of Music, and she likes Lady Gaga too, so I was mostly talking to her when I said: "And guess who sang all the songs from The Sound of Music?"

O (hopefully): "Jeff?"

So of course O had to take the CD, with its risque cover, to school to present to his teacher so she would play it for the class. There was no possibility of our saying no to this. The playing of the CD did not happen for some inexplicable reason, but we still have it and we always will.